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		<H2>3.4 A Thumbnail Sketch of the Data Prompter Choices</H2>
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<TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>Data Explorer File
</B></TD><TD><P>This choice is for when you already have data stored in Data
Explorer format, for
example if you are using a filter which converts from another format
to Data Explorer format.
</TD></TR><TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>CDF Format
</B></TD><TD><P>This is a standard data format which Data Explorer imports
directly. An application
programming interface can be obtained from the National Space Science Data
Center,
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
</TD></TR><TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>netCDF Format
</B></TD><TD><P>This is a standard data format which Data Explorer imports
directly. An
application programming interface for netCDF can be obtained from the
Unidata Program Center in Boulder, Colorado.
</TD></TR><TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>HDF Format
</B></TD><TD><P>This is a standard data format which Data Explorer imports
directly. HDF was
created at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
</TD></TR><TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>Image File
</B></TD><TD><P>Data Explorer directly imports TIFF, MIFF, GIF, and RGB format
images.
</TD></TR><TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>Grid or Scattered File
</B></TD><TD><P>This option allows you to specify a general array header which
can
describe a wide variety of formats of data. Data can be on a regular
grid, a warped grid with positions explicitly specified, or scattered.
The general array format can skip header lines and embedded descriptive
text. Data can be multidimensional, multivariable, and series
(see <A HREF="qikgu027.htm#HDRGAI">5.1 , "General Array Importer"</A>).
</TD></TR><TR VALIGN="TOP"><TD><P><B>Spreadsheet Format file
</B></TD><TD><P>This option is typically used for non-spatial data, for example
the
output of a spreadsheet program which might look like:
<PRE>
      Customer       Sales        Profit
      company_a       1.2           938
      company_b       8.9          1037
          .            .             .
          .            .             .
          .            .             .
</PRE>
See <A HREF="refgu074.htm#HDRIMPSPSH">ImportSpreadsheet</A> in <I>IBM
Visualization Data Explorer User&#39;s Reference</I>.
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